Thursday, June 19, 2008

Chinese is the New Black...seriously and literally



Yahoo News teased me with header about the Chinese in South African are now, considered Black. So I thought, that's something you don't hear everyday. I searched the nets until I found the article.

Turns out, a South African high court reclassified Chinese-South Africans as “black,” which includes black Africans, Indians and others who were subject to discrimination under apartheid. Also the "newly named Black people" will receive benefits from affirmative action policies aimed to end the mess of apartheid.

This is nothing new to them, in fact, it's been done before (see article hidden in the title). But could imagine if this happened here? Oh my goodness, it would be smoke in the city. If the courts changed the race classifications of a group, it could be WWIII or a great shift in cultural knowledge. But judging from my Southern folks, I doubt there would be any positive cultural shifting going on.

For more, click the title

1 comment:

PurpleZoe said...

Peace *_^

I agree. It would be a problem here because while Asians have been tokenized in America, and worked to the bone (especially when they first came here and turned over most of their gold findings because they were used and oppressed by typical colonizers) they have not been discouraged to live amongst whites, lynched or subjected to Jim Crow to my knowledge.

This does not mean their women were not raped, and that their men were not emasculated by colonizers, but colonizers were more tolerant of them, and were able to use them as 'good examples of people of color...' against those they deemed 'bad examples', no citation of groups falling under the latter label needed.

I'm not mad at the classification in South Africa though because it would appear they truly endured the Black experience there.

Shine on
-PZ

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Viktor is a small town southern boy living in Los Angeles. You can find him on Twitter, writing about pop culture, politics, and comics. He’s the creator of the graphic novel StrangeLore and currently getting back into screenwriting.